It’s been a life of law enforcement for Senior Constable WARREN BUNN. Here he talks to Ten One as his 43 years of service in Northland draw to a close.

Being stopped running a stop sign in Hamilton ironically steered a young Warren Bunn towards a career of law enforcement which has lasted more than four decades.

Being stopped running a stop sign in Hamilton ironically steered a young Warren Bunn towards a career of law enforcement which has lasted more than four decades.

Behind the wheel of a company car, the then 21-year-old flew past the sign but was stopped and issued a ticket.

During this interaction the officer talked about motorbikes, which Warren had a keen interest in. The experienced copper knew he had met a potential recruit and, while issuing the ticket, told him to join the team.

“I told him I’d think about it,” Warren says. “I rode motorbikes back then because of the mid-70s oil crisis and as a young fella that’s all you could afford.”

The ticket, combined with the idea of being paid to ride motorbikes, saw him head to Trentham for a 13-week course starting on 4 May 1981.

He started work with the Ministry of Transport as a motorcycle officer in Whangārei in August 1981. It was a very busy weekend - he got married to Cynthia on Saturday, they drove to Whangārei on Sunday and he started work on Monday.

It was in the days when the MoT uniform for bike riders consisted of leather boots, black leather jackets and all you needed was stashed in a panier on the side of a Honda or Yamaha.

Warren was one of eight riders and two patrol cars for the MoT in Whangārei. The job included writing tickets, traffic enforcement across the board, heavy vehicles, piloting wide loads and driver testing.

“I enjoyed the job and spent eight-and-a-half years on bikes. I would have stayed longer but they ran out of bikes and then decided it wasn’t cost effective to operate motorcycles in the fleet.”

Along with the routine traffic duties, there were royal tours where officers on bikes led the motorcades.

“We had two royal tours that we were doing point duty for and had to control the intersections while the Queen went past. Then you raced through the mid-North to another point to meet them again.”

In December 1990 Warren moved to Ruakākā, where he spent 14 years in rural policing. There he attended a number of fatal and serious crashes when the Waipu-Ruakaka straights were known as the 'killing fields'.

In 1992 came the merger between Police and the MoT, when mapping scenes was done using a pencil, paper and literally cutting and pasting the scene together.

He did his first fatal crash in 1988 while still with the MoT. In those days the Police still investigated the fatal crashes and the Ministry worked on everything up until the crash. By 2004, a position became available in the relatively new Serious Crash Unit and Warren was the successful applicant.

Back in the motorbike days the two panier boxes was your office.

“You’d open your panier boxes and there would be wet weather gear, traffic books, tape measure, pens, paper and a pencil,” Warren recalls.

“I do remember a fatal crash south of the vineyard on lookout hill in Whangārei. A guy coming down with a trailer full of sand which went out of control when he braked and he went across the road and hit an oncoming car and killed the woman passenger.

“I did all the measurements in paper and pen and then bought it back to the station and plotted it properly with vehicle cut-outs and matched it with tyre marks. It worked out and I was chuffed with it.”

Now surveying technology means with a punch of a button, pinpoint accurate 3D models of crash sites are created thanks to sophisticated software computer packages.

By his count, he’s attended “a couple of hundred” fatal crashes and up to 2000 crashes. “It’s about doing a good file for the staff who are there on the scene. I’m providing technical assistance for them. It’s about doing a good job.”

But it’s more than that.

“You’re working for the coroner and the families. It’s the families who have lost their son, daughter, wife, loved one. A lot of the time they want to know what has happened as part of their grief and closure.

“We can do that. Generally we know what has happened, but sometimes in a few rare cases we just don’t know why.”

He’s definite on why he’s done it for so long: “For me it’s about doing a good job and getting the satisfaction from that.”

To balance the trauma of the job, Warren has been involved with football and refereeing for 33 years. He was named Police Association Sports Administrator of the Year in 2020. Keeping physically fit, he says, is crucial to mental fitness.

He has also been a warranted Scout leader for about 40 years.

“I’ve always had options outside of Police. I was playing football for Tikipunga Premiers and I started refereeing. An injury moved me away from playing so kept in the game as a referee.

"Refereeing kept me fit for the game and as well for the job. I was also the Scout leader for various scout groups where I was stationed. I’ve had plenty of interests outside the MoT and Police and mixing with other people.”

He was able to indulge his sporting and professional passions during a nine-month deployment to the Solomon Islands in 2012 as part of RAMSI.

For the first six months he was a shift supervisor on the base security team at the police and military compound.

Earlier that year, during an international women’s football fixture between Papua New Guinea and New Zealand in Whangārei, Warren happened to meet some of the Solomon Island referees. He picked up the connection again on deployment and, when not on duty, joined the referees on training nights and helped with a couple of sessions.

This led to running the sidelines in the Honiara football leagues, and he helped organise a match between the national Solomon Islands team and an Australian Army team of troops from New South Wales serving with RAMSI.

He also got involved with local Scout groups, training leaders and establishing a programme to develop youth. That course continues to run and Warren and Cynthia have returned four times to work with the leaders and youth.

He has had badges made at his own expense and sent over to the Solomon Islands along with other equipment.

In the Solomons, Warren organised the redistribution of gear from the departing Army units to the Scouts and a local school - and even passed eight camp stretchers to nuns sleeping on the floor at a village church.

Warren is also proud of being able to help his colleagues and residents of Christchurch after the devastating earthquake of February 22, 2011.

He was among Northland staff who went south to work in the Red Zone during the state of emergency, with aftershocks still rumbling.

“The staff and the people down there were so grateful for us being there.”

Warren was also a member of the security team for the Papua New Guinea delegation to APEC in 1999.

After 43 years on the job, all on Northland turf, Warren reckons he made the right career choice.

“Society has changed - there used to be a lot more respect for authority. It’s become more about the individual rather than the community. I have no time for that.

“My job has enabled me to do so much like APEC, Christchurch, overseas deployment through to working on homicide scenes. It’s been an eye opener and there has been more good than bad. I have no regrets about my career.”

Warren has been on call every second week for years. That kind of dedication and sacrifice isn’t a common thing - it comes down to an amazing work ethic and a love of the job.

As part of a farewell morning tea, Acting District Commander Justin Rogers presented Warren with a District Commander's Commendation recognising his dedicated service to the Northland District Serious Crash unit over 20 years and his first-class service to victims and families impacted by serious and fatal crashes.

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